Seward: Part 1
Seward is a small town on a bay surrounded by mountains on all sides. It was established sometime in the 1850s as a port. It is also Mile Zero of the Iditarod trail.
After eating lunch, I walked to my hostel. It is run by a Swiss lady and her family. This hostel used to be a house, but was slightly modified so that the owners had the other half of the house for their residence. There was a kitchen and dining area, a living room, multiple bathrooms with showers, and six or seven rooms. I’m not exactly sure how many people could stay there, but my room had three bunk beds.
I got to Seward on July 3rd. Fireworks for the Fourth of July aren’t a huge thing in Alaska because it never gets too dark, but they did do fireworks at midnight. It’s likely that I was one of the first people to see the fireworks this year, but who’s counting?
Before this though, I went walking around the city. Seward is a very eclectic city. There are all kinds of little, interesting shops. My favorite was this place that sold Russian souvenirs. They had all kinds of USSR memorabilia. There were lots of Communist party pins with Lenin on them, propaganda posters in Cyrillic, Red Army Ushanka hats, matryoshka dolls, and various KGB items. I saw a KGB dress cap and a matryoshka doll and just had to buy them. The matryoska doll had Lenin on the outside layer followed by Stalin, Breshnev, Gorbachev, and – the crème de la crème – a little, tiny Putin. Who could pass that up?
The city is just very scenic. You can walk along the shore and see the bay and the mountains. On the Seward side, the mountains are very lush and green. On the opposite side, they are a gray, black with streams of snow coming down. It never got old. There are a ton of places for RV parking and tent camping. It’s the most RVs I’ve ever seen.
Around 6PM, I went to a bar to grab a drink to relax. It was a long day of traveling for me. I sat down at the bar and heard someone say, “Hey, Alex!” I was a little stunned because I wasn’t expecting anyone to know my name in this town. Anyway, it was Becca and Joel that I met in Denali. I got to know them really well. They are an adventurous, party animal type of couple. We had several drinks, and they bought two rounds of shots, and, well, who turns down shots, especially ones called Duck Fart? After this we walked right out of that bar, and right into another. But just before we walked in Joel yelled, “Seward!” This bar was great. There was a live band and some people were dancing.
At one point I went to the bathroom, but when I came out Becca and Joel were gone. So long, I guess. Everyone went outside because the fireworks were about to start. I ended up talking to this group of locals about my age. No one was particularly interested in the fireworks, so everyone went back inside to talk, drink, and listen to music. This bar closed shortly after, so we went to another place called Pit Bar which closed at 5AM.
We hung out a while. At one point I took off my jacket and sat it down on a chair in the back. It was a nice, warm jacket that I got at a military surplus store and is perfect for hiking in colder weather. We were talking and having a great time and eventually ended up on the patio. I got somewhat cold and went to find my jacket but it was gone. Someone took it. Needless to say, I was pretty irritated. I decided to leave. I didn’t have a car, and didn’t think about a taxi, so I started walking. It was about 4AM and the place was three miles from my hostel, so it would’ve taken me an hour to walk back. But luckily a taxi van pulled up out of nowhere and picked me up. There were two funny drunk guys getting a ride back to their place. They kind of shouted out the window, “Let’s pick him up!” I got in. The driver let them off at their stop and took me to my place. I asked what I owed him, but he told me that the other guys paid for me. Drunk people can be awfully polite. Thank god for those drunk bros! The driver gave me his business card when I got out. I was exhausted and woke up about 10:30AM. I pretty much lounged around the rest of the day.
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| Seward |
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| Looking across the bay |
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